When the revenue cutter visited the island in 1880 not a man, woman, or child was left to tell the tale. In four villages the corpses of the population alone were found. All the villages on the island with the single exception of Chib-uchak had been swept out of existence.

In 1884 Capt. Healy reports, "At the villages along the north shore no sign of living beings could be found, but the still decaying bodies of the unfortunate Eskimos were lying in and about the falling houses."

Before we dropped anchor four or five umniaks, loaded with natives, were waiting to board us. As soon as the anchor went down they paddled up to the

gangway, and from sixty to seventy men, women, and children came aboard, pre

pared to barter walrus tusks, ivory carvings, fur clothing, native boots and shoes, seal skin, etc. The women were more highly tattooed than any we have before met. As the captain wished to take the census of the village he had to go across to Indian Point (Cape Tchapalin), Siberia, for an interpreter.

It was a five-hours run. We reached Indian Point about 6 o'clock in the morning. The natives were soon off in force with the usual things for barter, and a few to secure the services of the ship's physician. The village consisted of some 2 dozen skin tents, also a few underground huts and one small frame house. Above the tide on the beach along the whole front of the village lay

the unbroken ice and snow. The village itself is on a low sandspit that projeets out into the sea. The mountains back and above the village were covered with snow, and even while we were anchored there, a driving snow storm was sweeping over them. Small cakes of floating ice were drifting around the vessel. Going ashore, I was greatly impressed with the number of the children. In all the journey I have not met so large a number. Being in Russia, our Alaskan school system can not reach them. They are an Eskimo colony, speaking the same language as the natives of St. Lawrence Island. Perhaps they could be induced to remove over there for the sake of schooling their children.

At Indian Point we had eider ducks for dinner, and found them good eating. Securing an interpreter, Tommy Tough by name, the captain, on the morning of June 30, returned to St. Lawrence Island. On our way across, although an allowance of 5 miles had been made for the current, the vessel was carried 10 miles farther out of its course, making a drift of 15 miles in a distance of 40. A dense fog having set in, the ship passed north of the island without seeing it. The fog lifting at 10:30 a. m., we retraced our course and soon after dropped anchor abreast of the village, and I went ashore with Lieut. Dimock, Dr. Holmes, and the interpreter.

The houses are from 20 to 40 feet in size. For a distance of 5 or 6 feet above the ground the walls are built of driftwood, whalebone, or timbers and planks from shipwrecked vessels. These are placed on end side by side, forming an inclosure in a circular or oblong form. The cracks between these planks are stuffed with moss. From the top of these walls rafters made of poles are extended across, meeting in the center. These are supported in the center by a ridge pole resting upon posts. These rafters are covered with walrus and seal skins, forming the roof. Some roofs are in the shape of a cone and others of a dome. Inside they are partitioned off around the sides with deer skin curtains. The spaces curtained off form the sleeping places. All around, inside and outside, are filth, dirt, sleds, spears, snowshoes, and household utensils. The houses and tents are located with no reference to order or street lines. The sleds are shod with bone. On a few small ones, the whole runner was made of a walrus tusk.

If the building is a very large one there is a row of supporting poles on each side, midway between the center and sides. Over the rafter poles are stretched walrus hides. These are held in position by rawhide ropes, attached to which and hanging down the sides of the building are the vertebræ of whales, large stones, and old iron from shipwrecked vessels. This anchorage both stretches the skins and prevents them from being blown off. These skins being translucent let in a great deal of light. There are no windows in the house, and buta small opening, from 2 to 2 feet above the ground, for a door. Fire, when they have any, is made on the dirt floor in the center of the room. Each building is occupied by several families. Near the house is a scaffold made of posts of the jaw bones of the whale. These are 7 to 10 feet high and 10 feet wide. A series of these make the scaffolds from 20 to 30 feet long. On these are placed the skin boats, harness of the dogs, meat, etc., so as to be out of the reach of dogs. Upon one of these, attached to the whale bone cross beam, was a child's swing made of walrus thong rope.

I saw several excavations where underground houses had once been, and one such house still standing with the roof partially fallen in. The sides were composed of walrus skulls laid up like a New England stone wall. In this house were some corpses, together with the spear and arrowheads and personal belongings of the dead.

Large patches of snow and ice still remain in the village, some of them being from 3 to 4 feet deep. As we passed from house to house we were followed by a crowd of dirty, but bright-looking children. From the eldest to the child which was just able to talk, they asked for tobacco, which is used by both sexes and all ages down to the nursing child. Five little girls, from 4 to 10 years of age, gave me a native dance. They commenced with a swinging motion of the body from side to side, throwing their weight alternately upon each foot. This was accompanied by an explosive grunt, or squeak, as if the air was being violently expelled from the lungs. As they warmed up, they whirled around, writhed and twisted their bodies and distorted their faces into all manner of shapes and expressions, until they would fall down with dizziness.

The census revealed a total population of 270, of whom 70 were boys and 55 girls, living in 21 houses. This is good village for a school. One established here ought to draw to it some families from Indian Point, Siberia. They are the same people, and the two villages are about 40 miles apart. During the summer of 1891 the Reformed Episcopal Missionary Society will establish a mission school at this village.

KING ISLAND.

Returning the interpreter to Indian Point, the captain steamed away for King Island, which we reached about 5 p. m. on July 1. This is one of the most remarkable settlements in America. The island is a great mass of basalt rock, about a mile in length, rising from the sea with perpendicular sides from 700 to 1,000 feet above the water. On the south side the wall is broken down by a ravine rising at an angel of 45 degrees, and is filled with loose rock. A great, permanent snow bank filled the bottom of the ravine from the water to the top of the mountain. On the west side of the snow is the village of Ouk-i-vak, which consists of some 40 dwellings or underground houses, partly excavated in the side of the hill, and built up with stone walls. Across the top of these walls are large poles made from the driftwood that is caught floating around the island. Upon these are placed hides and grass, which are in turn covered with dirt. A low tunnel or dirt-covered hallway, 10 to 15 feet long, leads directly under the center of the dwelling. This is so low that we had to stoop and often creep in entering. At the end of the hall directly overhead is a hole about 18 inches in diameter. This is the entrance to the dwelling above.

Frequently in summer, these caves become too damp to live in. The people then erect a summer house upon top of the winter one. The summer house consists of walrus hides, stretched over a wooden frame, making a room from 10 to 15 feet square. These summer houses are guyed to rocks with rawhide ropes, to prevent them from being blown off into the sea. The entrance is an oval hole in the walrus hide, about 2 feet above the floor. Outside of the door is a narrow platform about 2 feet wide, leading back to the side of the hill. Some of these platforms are from 15 to 20 feet above the roofs of the huts below them. Across the ravine from the village, at the base of the perpendicular sides of the island is a cave, into the mouth of which the surf dashes and roars. At the back of the cave is a large bank of perpetual snow. On the side of the mountain above there is a perpendicular shaft from 80 to 100 feet deep, leading down into the cave. This cave is the storehouse for the whole village. Walrus and seal meat is dropped down the shaft, and then stored away in rooms excavated in the snow. As the temperature in the cave never rises above freezing point, meat so stored soon freezes solid and keeps indefinitely. The women gain entrance to their storehouse by letting themselves down the shaft, hand over hand, along a rawhide rope.

Capt. Healy had a census taken with the following result: Total population 200, of whom 33 were males and 45 females under 21 years of age. Here, as at the other native villages, I secured a number of articles of interest for the museum of natural history and ethnology at Sitka.

THE WHALING FLEET.

At 3:15 a. m. on the 2d of July the ship anchored at Port Clarence, in the midst of the Arctic whaling fleet. Eight steamers and eighteen sailing vessels, all flying the American flag, were an inspiring sight in this far off, uninhabited bay; almost within the Arctic Circle; and the more so, as a few months ago, in Washington, I heard a gentleman who had just returned from a trip around the world, say in a public address that in all his trip, he had seen but one vessel flying the Stars and Stripes. Many of the whalers leave San Francisco in January, and it is their custom to gather at this point about the 1st of July before entering the Arctic Ocean, to meet a steamer sent from San Francisco with a fresh supply of provisions, coal, etc.

Soon after anchoring, the captains of the whalers began arriving in order to get their mail, for the captain of the revenue steamer, among other good offices for humanity, brings up the yearly mail for the 2,000 whalers, traders, teachers, and missionaries, and whoever else may be living in the Arctic regions of the United States. For those who have had no tidings from their loved ones at home or returns from an important business transaction, the coming of the revenue steamer is an important event. Great bundles of letters and papers were piled upon the captain's table, and again and again they were carefully scanned, each captain picking out those that belonged to himself or his crew. Some of them

did this so nervously, that though they personally looked over the packet three or four different times, they still missed some, which would be detected and handed out by some one foliowing.

A few visiting Eskimos were camped upon the beach, some of them being dressed in bird instead of deer skins.

The day before we arrived the mate of one of the vessels had died, and an officer on another vessel was very sick, dying a few weeks afterwards. In a fleet with hundreds of sailors are some accidental cuts, bruises, etc., so that there were many calls for the professional services of the Government physician. This is another feature of the beneficent work of the revenue steamer. In Arctic Alaska in summer are 2,000 sailors on the whalers, a hundred traders and thousands of natives, covering an area of tens of thousands of square miles, and no physician except the one carried around on the annual cruise of this vessel. The value of such services can not be estimated.

During our stay at Port Clarence Capt. Healy, in the discharge of his official duty, as usual, sent officers on board of every vessel to search for liquors. The large majority of the captains of the whaling vessels are opposed to the trading of liquors to the natives for furs; but there are some who believe in it, and boldly say that if the cutter did not come and search them they would engage in it, and that they do engage in it on the Siberian coast, where the cutter has no jurisdiction. The result of the search was that 11 barrels of alcohol and 6 cases of gin were seized upon one schooner and emptied into the ocean. One captain, seeing the officer coming, emptied a barrel of liquor over the side of his vessel and threw three gallon cans after it. The cans, instead of sinking, floated by the searching officer. He, doubtless thinking them empty kerosene cans, did not take the trouble to pick them up. During the past ten years hundreds of barrels of vile liquors have been emptied into the sea as the result of the vigilance of Capt. Healy and the officers of the revenue cutter. The amount of crime, suffering, and destitution thus prevented can not be overestimated. The country and all who are interested in saving the natives of this coast from the demoralization of rum owe a large debt of gratitude to Capt.- Healy, who has practically broken up the traffic on this northwest coast.

One of the captains reported a case of assault and battery with intent to kill. On the 30th of June his steward had dangerously wounded one of the sailors, cutting with a razor a gash 84 inches long and to the ribs in depth. The steward had been in irons ever since. It was a small schooner and there was no suitable place for keeping the prisoner, who had threatened to kill the mate and fire the ship when he regained his liberty. Under the circumstances the captain was very anxious to get rid of him, and wrote Capt. Healy, as the nearest Government official, an urgent letter asking him to take the man off his hands. This is another phase of the manysided work of a Government cutter in this vast land without law or courts. The steward being equally anxious to claim the protection of the Government, he was brought alongside in irons. The irons were taken off and he was assigned work. The commanding officers of all the revenue vessels visiting these outlying portions of the country should be clothed with the powers of a justice of the peace, so that offenses could be investigated, testimony taken, and offenders arrested and bound over for trial at the United States district court at Sitka. As it is, the captain could not legally have taken this man against his will, and when the vessel arrives at San Francisco the man can go ashore a free man, escaping not only all punishment, but even an official investigation.

In the harbor awaiting our arrival was the schooner Oscar and Hattic, Capt, J. J. Haviside master, laden with building material and supplies for the schoolhouses at Cape Prince of Wales, Point Hope, and Point Barrow. The schooner got under way that same afternoon for Cape Prince of Wales, about 30 miles distant. Upon the following day the schooner Jennie arrived with supplies for the whalers. She had on board the four teachers, Messrs. H. R. Thornton and W. T. Lopp for Cape Prince of Wales, Dr. John B. Drigg for Point Hope, and Mr. L. M. Stevenson for Point Barrow. At midnight we witnessed one of those gorgeous sunsets for which the Pacific coast is so famous.

On the morning of the 4th of July all the vessels "dressed ship" in honor of the day. At 8 o'clock a. m. we got under way, reaching Cape Prince of Wales at 1:25 p. m. The captain very kindly sent Prof. Thornton and myself ashore at once, and we celebrated the 4th of July, 1890, by locating at this extreme western end of the western hemisphere the site and laying the foundations of the first schoolhouse and mission on the Arctic coast of Alaska. From this school is visible to the north, the Arctic Ocean; to the south, Bering Sea, and to the west, Bering Straits, the coast of Siberia, and Diomede Islands. The cape is a bold promontory crowned with groups of needle rocks. As we had a teacher on board, we could trace the resemblance of one group to a teacher and pupils. Back of the coast the mountain peaks rise to the height of 2,596 feet. At the base of the promontory is a low sand spit, upon which is built the native village of King-e-gan. This school is one of the contract schools of the U. S. Bureau of Education and is in charge of the American Missionary Association of the